


The Sick Rose

by stripyjamjar



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (well in theory), Angst, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bucky Barnes Feels, Correcting my unforgivable dearth of Peggy Carter fic, Emotional Baggage, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gaslighting, Grief/Mourning, Kinda, M/M, Memory Loss, Multi, Mystery, POV Peggy Carter, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter may have dementia but she knows what's up, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Unreliable Narrator, Up all night to get Bucky, William Blake references, angst in spades, because whyever not, more tags will be added as we go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5104370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stripyjamjar/pseuds/stripyjamjar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She used to blot her notes in this manner, sometimes, as a wordless memo to her future self: look here, this is important. The method might have changed but the message hasn’t strayed one jot. And above it, across the middle of the page in striking, desperate block capitals are the words:</i><br/>  <b>JBB IS ALIVE.</b></p><p> </p><p>Peggy Carter's final mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look, a new WIP! Title shamelessly plagiarised from a better literary mind than mine.

She gets frequent visitors these days.

First there had been a man with hair like flax and eyes like pools in shade, and she’d stared at him and her lips had shaped the word _Steve_ before she realised who he was.

It was unreal; it couldn’t be truth. He looked achingly similar, although he’d cut his hair. It didn’t suit him, she thought.

“Yeah, Peggy,” he’d said, and she couldn’t have articulated what hearing the sound of her own name felt like. Too many people called her Margaret here.

She’d nodded, _yes_ , breath stuttering in a way that had naught to do with ageing lungs. “It’s been so long,” she managed, tears coming unbidden. “So long.” Steve looked so sad. So much sadder, and so much _older_.

“Well, I couldn’t leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance.”

The words are lifted straight from the annals of history, but the cadence is wrong. His mouth curves upwards in all the wrong ways.

* * *

She watches the fall of the Triskelion on the news, sees a new haircut atop an old suit. Steve Rogers is alive.

Steve’s alive, and he owes her a damn _dance_.

The paperweight goes through the chunky television set like a musket ball through butter. Two nurses escort her back to her own room, their touches gentle. As if they’re handling something fragile, breakable. A baby bird.

She’s volatile. She’s never been fragile in her life.

* * *

One of the nurses comes and sits with her. He’s young, younger than Steve was when he braved the serum. He smiles at her and takes her hand but somehow it doesn’t rile her. In his steady grip, her hand gradually stops shaking.

“I learned a new thing in my history class today,” he says. Stories are calming. She smiles and waits for him to go on.

* * *

Steve comes to see her.

“I’m sorry,” she says briskly. “I’ve been rather ill. I must look frightful.” The hand she raises to pat her hair is paper-dry.

“You look beautiful,” Steve assures her, taking her hand gently in both of his. His gaze flicks towards the door as though he’s afraid of being interrupted.

 _Oh Steve,_ she wants to say, _there’s no need to worry about … around here_.

The pitch of the phrase echoes in her mind but she can’t get a grip on the word to fill the gap. It fills with angry static instead and the moment slides away from them.

* * *

The male nurse has been at her bedside often enough that she knows his face. She often has to ask him his name but he always tells her with a smile sincere enough to eclipse any mortification on her part.

“I’m Evan,” he says today, and Peggy replies, “Decorum.”

Evan shakes his head a little. “Sorry?”

“Oh, I…” She waves a hand airily, _decorum_ and _Evan_ spiralling like stirred tea leaves. The word had somewhere to be. It had been needed for something. To complete something. “Evan,” she repeats, shrugging off the feeling.

“Yes?” Evan looks up; he’s on the other side of the room, arranging the low table Peggy likes to look at. It’s strewn with curling brown-lipped petals. When it becomes clear that she was only saying his name, he ducks his head again and scoops them into his hand. “I don’t think these will last much longer,” he says, gesturing towards the tall vase filled with wilted blooms. “I can get you some fresh ones at lunchtime?”

“No, don’t.” Her words come out sharp. Evan spins around, dropping petals from between his fingers.

“Okay,” he says after a beat. “I’ll leave them, that’s fine. I’m just gonna get rid of these,” holding up his bunched hands, “okay?”

Peggy nods. She’s spooked him. Evan crosses to the waste bin and brushes off his hands. He’s kneeling to pick shreds of flower detritus off the carpet when she speaks again.

“They’re freesias.” Inclining her head towards the drooping stems. Evan glances up and she offers him an apologetic smile, which he tentatively returns. As he straightens up, his hair shines in the sunlight: auburn flashing gold.

“Yeah,” he replies, “they’re my mom’s favourite.”

“They’re mine too.”

They share another smile, warmer this time. Then he gathers up a few things he’s left scattered about the room – a clipboard, a chewed biro, a microfibre cleaning cloth – and leaves, telling her he’ll be back at lunchtime.

Peggy tries to hold onto his name but it’s smoke in her head. She looks at the flowers instead. Stares and breathes, determination tightening her lips. She hadn’t been completely honest before. They _are_ freesias, but they may as well have thorns for the way she hooks herself onto them.

Petals. Blue petals. Pale. Pale blue like eyes and sadness.

Steve bought her those flowers. Steve, who is inexplicably alive.

* * *

A few days later, a man comes into her room to remove the wall bracket that had once supported a television set.

“Safety hazard,” he explains congenially enough, when she asks. “Sticking out like that. Could have somebody’s eye out.” Without looking down, he pats at his tool belt until he pulls out an orange-handled pair of pliers.

Peggy dozes and wakes to the rough _swoosh_ of sandpaper.

“All done for now,” says the man, wiping plaster dust off the backs of his hands and onto his thighs. “It’ll want painting over – I’ll come and do that sometime next week.” He tosses his equipment into a tough canvas bag that clanks with every addition, and then he’s gone.

Later on, the male nurse she likes is using a handheld vacuum to get rid of the dust that drifted to settle on the carpet and skirting board. Peggy looks at his hair, the way it curls around his ears, and chases her mind in endless circles in the hunt for his name.

“…so I _told_ her it was a dumb idea,” he says into the lull as he shuts off the vacuum. “And she just turns around to me and goes, ‘Evan. How many chances are you gonna get to watch a meteor shower?’” He laughs.

Evan. The name settles onto her shoulders and Peggy relaxes into her pillow, resting her head on the lip of the headboard. He’s kind, is Evan. He does this with practiced ease, slipping his own name into the conversation when he notices she hasn’t used it. Staring hard at that cowlick tickling his ear, she thinks _Evan. Evan. Evan_. Fierce enough that perhaps it will stick this time.

“Did you go?” she asks. She has been following the story. Evan’s words sparkle with naked enthusiasm and that helps, stops her mind becoming distracted.

He grins at her. “Yep. Snuck out of my house and everything. My life’s never been so much like a movie. We drove right out of town and sat on the roof of the van and ate peanut butter cups and watched meteors. Pretty awesome.”

“This girl you went with,” says Peggy, because she’s feeling wicked, “Are you sweet on her?”

Oh, that’s glorious. Evan’s ears turn pink but his grin widens. Peggy feels something like a starburst in her ribcage; she feels sharp and light at the same time.

“You have,” says Evan, carefully shifting the little table back into place, “the best way of putting things. Sweet on her. I’m gonna have to remember that phrase.”

The lightness lasts until he leaves. But then Peggy turns automatically to see the colour blue and realises that the vase is empty. The flowers were important. There was something about the flowers and now they’re gone. She racks her brain but to no avail.

If she had the strength she’d send the vase straight through the window, crystal be damned.

* * *

She’s been neglecting her shorthand of late. It must be a Thursday, because Evan doesn’t come in until lunchtime and the cleaners have been round this morning to empty the waste bins.

Peggy starts, her heart jumping. Today she is a live wire. She asks and her mind answers promptly, rather than obfuscating. Evan’s name appears just like that, alongside the weekly staff rotas that she’d memorised back when she first moved here.

Spending the morning in the squiggles and flourishes of her pencil is peaceful. Her strokes are rather more jittery than she’d like but that can’t be helped, although she can only imagine the groans of her tutor from way back when. Learning shorthand had been a difficult slog but she never found cause to regret it, and now it’s a strange comfort. A skill that is concretely hers. It’s an old, old lesson: she rarely forgets the old ones.

When her knuckles begin to ache, Peggy sets down the pencil. She runs her fingers over the spiral-bound notepad and bends the pages, enjoying the tight whirr as she flicks them out from under her thumb.

A flash of black ink catches her eye and she frowns. She uses each leaf meticulously, ignoring the margins and instead writing across the whole width; she does not write on arbitrarily-selected pages in the middle. And yet, inexplicably, there is something scribbled deep in the cushioning white pad. Holding it up, she flips through it more slowly. She almost drops it when she reaches the right place. Alarm splashes like boiling water within her ribcage.

She shakes her head and rereads. Moves her fist closer to her eyes and squints. Then she closes the notebook up tightly, snapping the elastic around it. She places it in her lap and clasps her hands, staring down at it as though the paper has become sentient.

The slant of the pen is hers. The slight shake in the hand is hers. And in the very corner of the page there is a dark scribble, clumsily executed in biro to mimic the splotchy ink blot of a fountain pen. She used to blot her notes in this manner, sometimes, as a wordless memo to her future self: look here, this is important.

The method might have changed but the message hasn’t strayed one jot. And above it, across the middle of the page in striking, desperate block capitals are the words:

JBB IS ALIVE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squishy beta-love to the indescribable [Scappodaqui](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui).
> 
> Thank you for reading! As ever, I'm on [Tumblr](http://www.stripyjamjar.tumblr.com).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the pages of a book she once knew by heart are blank and meaningless.

The next morning she wakes up and the first thing she sees is her notebook. Instinctively, her hand goes to it and she tucks it into the top drawer of the cabinet beside her bed.

The sun slants heavily through the Venetian blinds at her window. It feels somehow right, being up at this hour. There have been plenty of other early mornings like this one. Dragging herself out from under a duvet barely warmed from the heat of her exhausted body since she’d tumbled into it perhaps four hours before. And that’s if she was lucky.

There was always so much that needed to be _done_. That at least is bedrock truth in her mind: the sense of an imperative. Motives and missions blend into one another: war and the times between them. Peaceful times, one might have said. _Not in my line of work_. The absence of combat simply meant things were quieter – covert wars were fought just as viciously as open ones. More so, in fact. Who could point an accusatory finger, after all, when there were no neatly drawn-up alliances? She’d discovered first-hand the ease with which people found they could segue from a partnership gone sour to one that offered a little more sweetness.

Betrayal stung; it always stung. It always made her think of Steve.

Not that she felt he’d betrayed her with his death – she had never once felt that.

But then why did it…?

Why does she think of treachery and then think of him with compassion?

The sun is in her eyes. She blinks at it and puts the idea aside. There had been a time when the library of her mind was an infinite array: shelved and accessible, a Dewey Decimal system in flavour and feeling and fragrance. The bookmarks of sensation sitting alongside sense. Whereas these days she’s all-too used to the unsettling notion that the library is… is shifting. Sometimes she’ll reach for a memory she knows ought to be there, only to find a vacuum in its place. Sometimes the pages of a book she once knew by heart are blank and meaningless.

It’s a lottery. A lucky dip. Grope in the darkness with tentative fingers and see what your mind hands you.

Peggy remembers, abruptly, the reason the television set in her room was removed. It was feared she could not cope with watching the news.

The sun is hot on her face and it reminds her of anger.

A paperweight through the widescreen in the communal sitting room. Beyond that is murk and uncertainty.

There is a knock at the door.

“One moment,” she calls, one hand automatically smoothing her hair. With an effort, she bunches up the pillows at her back and sits up. The nightgown she wears is perfectly decent but all the same, she would prefer a bathrobe. Steeling herself, she says, “Come in.”

The door opens smoothly on sturdy, oiled hinges. A young man steps in, pushing a two-tiered trolley.

“Morning, Peggy,” he says, cheerful.

She smiles, immediately taking a shine to this lad who knows her preferred name. The curl of his hair is familiar but for the first few minutes he doesn’t stand still enough to allow her to look at him properly. He’s a character after her own heart: striding across to open the windows before glancing over his shoulder at the shaft of sunlight and reaching up one hand to angle the blinds.

“Is that better?” he asks, while Peggy breathes softly into the sudden hazy dimness and waits for her eyes to adjust.

“Yes,” she says through dry, sun-heated lips. “You’re very kind.”

He looks at her carefully for a moment before swiping a duster from his trolley and going to work on the low table opposite. It is occupied by a couple of books and a small, slightly bedraggled lace tablecloth that hangs listlessly over the front. It looks inexplicably empty, all the same. The lad swiftly wipes it free of dust and then folds the cloth in on itself to capture any lingering flecks.

“I brought back your vase,” he says as he works, busy hands rearranging the books. “One of the night nurses must’ve taken it to rinse out – it was in the staff kitchen.”

“Thank you,” Peggy says. The table does look better with the cut-crystal centrepiece.

“You might get some fresh flowers today, what with visiting hours and all. Cap said he’d try and bring some next time.”

She looks at him blankly and he straightens. Unease floods the room.

“Young man,” Peggy says gently. “Captain Rogers is dead.” There is hurt in her voice.

He flushes, one hand flying to palm his right temple. “I – yes ma’am, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – lemme just pack up this shi– this stuff. Sorry, I – sorry.”

Long fingers swiping a wave of hair away from his face, and something slots into position like a reel in a View-Master. Something hidden turns towards the light.

“Have we met before?”

The hand lowers, slow and careful. “Uh, yeah, a coupla times. But don’t – I mean, I hope I haven’t upset you, ma’am.”

Peggy sighs. “Not at all. Please call me Peggy. _Ma’am_ always makes me feel rather middle-aged.”

“Well, you’re not that,” he replies, smiling as he steps forward to shake her outstretched hand. It’s a firm handshake despite the tentativeness of his joke, which Peggy appreciates. She laughs. It’s nice to experience this light sense of fun once more. It’s not often there’s much to laugh about here, other than her own memories; without company to share them with, their humour tarnishes like neglected silver.

“I’m Evan,” the lad says, keeping her hand in his for a few moments. The skin on his palms is soft, young. It feels like satin against her knuckles.

“Evan,” she repeats, tightening her grip and looking into his face. “You’ll have to remind me, dear. I’ve a terrible memory for names, these days.” She keeps her voice light but it quavers on the final notes.

Evan gives her a small smile. “Don’t worry, Peggy. I’ll keep telling you.” He moves back and gives the room a final once-over with quick eyes. “I gotta go now,” he says apologetically, “but I can come back once I’ve done the rest of the floor, okay?”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Peggy replies. “Before you go, would you mind handing me the book on top?” She gestures to the table and Evan picks up the one she means. His eyebrows flick upwards as he reads the title.

“This is new,” he comments, passing it over. The title is large and glaring: _Alzheimer’s from the Inside Out_.

She grins. “Better the devil you know.”

 _That_ earns her a genuine, surprised burst of laughter. She basks in it as though it were sunlight.

It fades once Evan leaves. He keeps her cheerful but it’s all too easy to sink back into the quagmire of bitter frustration the second she’s alone. Of course she’s reading up about it. Really, it’s as though they think she doesn’t _know_.

Reading comes easier some days than others. On one day, she can perform the task unthinkingly; on the next, the words refuse to sound themselves out in her head. Or they lodge there like a blockage, like carbon buildup in a Sten gun, only she can’t simply dismantle the pieces and knock out the debris. They’re just stuck there, meaningless yet unreachable. Useless.

She takes a few breaths to keep from screaming and the weight of the book in her lap reminds her of her notebook. It had been out this morning – why was that? She never leaves it out.

Turning, she yanks open the top drawer of the cupboard and the relief she feels at seeing the pad is something of a shock. She grasps it and flips to the last page on which she wrote.

Nothing but shorthand practice. She gives up the attempt to read it; her head aches.

* * *

When she wakes, the reassuring weight of the Alzheimer’s book presses on the tops of her thighs. The light has dwindled into mid-afternoon streaks. She mutters a prim _damn_ under her breath and wonders whether Evan did return after his rounds.

Peggy glances up and her gaze catches on the colour red. Red carnations fill the vase, long-stemmed and budding. One or two of them are just beginning to crack into bloom but most are still sealed up tight like unopened letters. They’re the same deep shade as sealing wax, too, the kind she used to receive embossed with Post Office insignia from old St Martin’s friends. Her unfamiliar American address carefully handwritten in ink on heavy paper, free from blots and franked over the stamp on the front – the king’s head, George VI back then, of course, postmarked HAMPSTEAD or DOVER or ST. ALBANS. Of all the old school girls, she’s the one who strayed the farthest.

The flowers are a warm colour. A reassuring colour: her favourite. But it doesn’t quite sit right with her.

Peggy shakes her head; she’s being ungrateful. “Margaret,” she tells herself sternly, “you buck up your ideas this instant.”

She settles down to read. Her fingers absently scrabble behind her ear for a pencil that isn’t there. Smiling faintly, she turns towards the cabinet and opens the top drawer to retrieve a pen. Halfway inside, she freezes. The smile withers. She sits bolt upright, probing the blankets for something dense and rectangular.

It’s not there.

It’s not _there_.

It can’t be missing. Things that go missing for her now might never return.

“Wherever did you put it, Peg?” she mutters, as if disguising her own tone of voice could ever fool herself. It’s pitch-perfect, a lick of exasperation swathed in sugary lightness, because she’s always been an actress, even with panic clutching at her throat.

There’s a thump as the book on Alzheimer’s hits the floor. _Notebook_ , she thinks fiercely. It must be here. It _must_ be. Where else could it be? It’s a _notebook_.

“Uh, Peggy?”

What is Evan doing back here? He finishes work at lunchtime today. She keeps searching.

“Peggy, what’s wrong? Have you – lost something?”

Sturdy footsteps round the edge of the bed and reach her side. The book – useless, mocking, hopeless thing that it is – is held out to her. She seizes it, fully intending to hurl it across the room, except then she looks up.

Blue flowers. Freesias.

Peggy blinks. Not flowers: blue eyes.

“Steve?” she breathes.

“Yeah, Peggy,” Steve says, sinking to his knees at her bedside. He nudges the book away and takes her hand, twining their fingers. “I’m here. I promise.”

This, here – _this_ is the right colour. The colour of sorrow. And of loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was _blown away_ by the positive response to the first chapter! So many lovely comments! You guys. :3
> 
> Beta thanks to [Scap](http://http://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui), as ever. <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s been so long,” Peggy says.

“It’s been so long,” Peggy says.

Steve’s gaze flicks up to hers but he catches the twinkle in her eye and smiles. “You always say that.”

“Almost two months, Captain. But then again,” she murmurs, settling her shoulders into her pillow without letting go of his warm hand, “you never were particularly punctual.”

“Guess I wasn’t.” There’s a whisper of fabric as Steve shucks off his jacket, switching Peggy’s hand between his as he frees himself from the sleeves. He reaches one long arm behind him and pulls up the only chair in the room. Peggy keeps it in the corner where it can peep out from behind the curtains and where she can’t see it from her bed. It’s an aluminium-framed, sponge-cushioned thing, ugly as sin. The seat is covered with some kind of rough material akin to tweed: it’s grey with inexplicable pink flecks.

She’ll forgive it its miserable existence, however, as Steve sits and leans forward, his bulk radiating warmth. He has a way of thumbing the back of her hand that makes her forget the fragility of her own bones.

Brittleness crept up on her. Pace through the woods for long enough and twigs will snap under your heels.

But what’s to lament? Age is a merit she has earned, after all, in her line of work.

 _Getting melancholy, Peg_.

“So,” she says briskly, opening her eyes. (Had she closed them? Apparently so.) “I suppose I should brace myself to receive your latest excuse for being late?”

Steve sits up, the humour in his face fading. “The staff here told me you saw the Triskelion on the news. The helicarriers?” His expression quickly schools itself but his face has always been open to her and she catches the gleam of hope before it’s tucked away.

A paperweight. Heavy in her palm with the knowledge that Steve was alive, alive, alive. It’s a strange sensation, discovery in duplicate. Shock layered over surprise layered over a twinge of _déjà entendu_. The feeling of having heard something before.

Peggy nods. Slow. And Steve tells her the story again. She knows it’s _again_ because he doesn’t falter; the words have a rehearsed quality to them like the scripted lines he once read out on cue in front of ambivalent clusters of troops. But if he’s at all frustrated he keeps it from bleeding into his voice, and for that Peggy is more grateful than she can say. She squeezes his hand instead: gentle as most all her movements are these days. Drawing in a deep breath, she looks up from their clasped hands.

“So I had to come back,” Steve is saying, anguished. “Because I’m the only person who can speak for him and they want to _prosecute_ , Peg. I flew back from Kiev to speak at a press conference and a – a military tribunal, I think. People keep spewing legal-speak at me and I only understand about seventy-five percent of it.” He chokes off like a stalled engine and presses one hand to his forehead, fingers in his hair. Peggy recognises the movement: it’s the one he does when he won’t bury his face in his hands. When he’s overwhelmed but his spine remains ramrod straight.

“Steve,” Peggy says softly, retrieving her left hand from inside his only to place it over the back of his knuckles. “Steve, listen to me, my darling. He’s alive–”

“I _know_ , and that’s what–”

“–and _that’s what’s_ important,” she interrupts, steely tones severing Steve’s protest. A flash of youthful bravado summoned from somewhere within her and suddenly she feels livelier than she has in months. The rush of giving orders; she’d almost forgotten how it felt. Responsibility steadies her words while care softens them. “You’re doing everything you can be doing. Give him time. He’ll come back.”

Steve won’t look at her. He swallows and clears his throat. It takes him a few seconds before he can husk, “You think?” through barely-parted lips.

“Yes,” Peggy replies, because there are some memories she’s never lost. Old, old memories – though still fresh to Steve. Still raw.

She remembers a promise, too, and it seals her lips. But Steve hasn’t lifted his eyes and Peggy has seldom been capable of resisting his unhappiness. Brushing her fingertips over the smooth skin on the back of his hand, she offers instructions in place of platitudes.

“Now Steve, listen. There are a couple of things I need.”

His neck immediately straightens. “Of course, Peg, whatever you – whatever you need.”

She grins at him, blood singing through her veins. “I’ll need a computer. Ask Tony. Get a StarkPad, one with a secure internet connection and a decent amount of storage. And fast, it must be fast.”

Steve’s staring at her as though she’s just sprouted wings and it makes her irritable-gleeful-sad in quick succession. She clutches at the glee. “Steve, dear, you’ll catch flies like that.”

He snaps his mouth shut only to open it again a moment later. “Sorry, it’s just I–”

“You forget,” Peggy supplies gently. “It’s not new to me.”

Steve shakes his head and then nods. Reaching around for the pocket of his jacket, he pulls out a little black notepad and a biro. “Tablet,” he says, scribbling it down. “Anything else?”

Peggy can’t help but think it heartwarming, the way he writes the list so earnestly as though there’s the remotest chance he’ll forget a word. She rattles off the names of some files – hardcopy files, ones she knows still exist deep within SHIELD’s archives. If she closes her eyes she can feel them, rough and dry. Scent of typewriter ink and carbon paper. 1947, 1949, 1954. Whispers. She wrote some of them herself, but now she has fresh intel directing her gaze.

Steve writes them down diligently. “Where do I find these?”

“Ask Fury. Tell him I said it’s necessary.”

“What if he, uh–” Steve pauses and the side of his mouth scrunches in displeasure. “…refuses?”

“Steve,” Peggy tells him, smiling her best defusing smile, “those files may contain vital information about what happened to Sergeant Barnes. At the very least they might give us some background and at best they could provide us with a clue as to where he may have headed first.”

He nods firmly. “I’ll get them.” Then there’s another pause, during which Steve smiles back at her as though she is a miracle-worker. “Us?” he queries.

Peggy laughs. “Well, I don’t know that I can be as much help as I could have been back in the day,” she says. “But I can certainly try.”

Steve’s expression brightens further. With careful fingers, he tears out the leaf from his notebook and crinkles it into her hand. “There,” he says carefully. “I’ll come back with this whole bunch of stuff, okay?” He doesn’t say _to remind you_ or _so you don’t forget_. As he stands, he kisses her cheek, very softly; she wonders if the hard band of her wedding ring presses against his mind as it does his palm. The metal is smooth as silk, worn by the years. Her years, not his. The life of Peggy Carter in beaten gold, implacably encircling her finger when the rest of her seems to waver. Sometimes when the gaps in her mind are at their loudest, she will slip it easily from her finger and palm it instead. Holding onto it – active, gripping – even while it’s her anchor.

Strange indeed to look back on her past as a murky miasma. Stranger still, to consider it’s just as mysterious to this man at her side: the man she would gladly have shared it with. Sometimes she can remember the war with greater clarity than she can remember the face of her husband.

She draws back from that line of thought. She promised herself long ago that Steve Rogers would never cause her to regret the course of her life, and he’d be aghast at the very idea.

 _I’d hate to step on your_ –

No, that fragment will never leave her.

“Steve,” Peggy says suddenly as Steve moves to unclasp their hands, and he freezes, eyes searching.

“Yeah, Peg?”

“Thank you. For this.” The paper rustles. Oh, she can’t look at him. He’s wearing that watery half-smile and it may shatter her.

“Thank me once I’ve gotten hold of those documents,” Steve says with false levity. But that wasn’t what she meant at all, and Peggy has to make sure he knows it. Her next words are firm – _firm_ , she forces them to be that – but they’re quiet.

“I do _know_ ,” she tells him, raising her head to meet his eyes as he stands proud and tall at her bedside. “I do, honestly.”

“I believe you,” Steve replies unflinchingly. “You’re still the smartest person I know.”

Although she doesn’t feel _smart_ once Steve leaves and the afternoon erodes into evening. Something aches within her ribcage. She opts to remain in her room when she’s offered a stint in the communal living area and she picks at her dinner. She wants to mull over her new information but it’s elusive, oil on water. She contents herself with merely being aware of its existence.

Conversation has taken its toll on her frame; her eyelids droop.

* * *

When she wakes, her room is dark and there is a paper crushed in her hand. Peggy frowns.

Not _a_ paper. _The_ paper. The paper with the list. The list that Steve wrote. This is the paper that Steve gave her. It’s all right. She hasn’t lost the day.

Peggy sighs in relief and across the room, the curtains ripple in the breeze from the open window.

The… oh.

Once upon a time, she’d have silently snaked a hand underneath her pillow for her Colt semi-automatic, rolled off the bed and have fired two or three shots before the intruder knew she was awake.

But it’s 2014 and there is no gun under her head and besides, if any more of the myriad organisations she’s royally irritated over the years have caught up with her now, they’re rather late to the show.

Peggy laughs, harsh and sudden, and the shadow by the table jerks in surprise. There’s a metallic glint: a weapon. _Well then_ , Peggy thinks, acceptance replacing resignation. She raises her head and calls across the empty space, low but audible.

“You can wait until I fall asleep, if you don’t mind.”

Naught but silence in response. Peggy shrugs to herself and the bones in her shoulders creak underneath their thin skin. At least she’s given Steve a little help. He never needed much more than a prod in the right direction, after all. _I can do better than that_ , she’d said to him once. And she still could. She still _can_ – unless the figure in her room is indeed here to terminate her during the night. Either way, Steve will read the files. He’s sharp. He’ll know what to do with them.

_When did you become so compliant, Agent?_

This isn’t compliance. This is defiance. She has precious few alternatives left to her.

She shuffles down into the bed and lets sleep overpower her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good writing inspires good writing and I've been inspired by spitandvinegar's [Ain't No Grave](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5094785) recently. It hardly needs it, but here is a shoutout and an encouragement to go and read it.
> 
> And I'd beta not forget to thank [Scappodaqui](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui). Bad puns are only the tip of the iceberg in the myriad ways she inspires me.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s nice to have something normal. Peggy pours herself a cup and adds a dash of milk. The tea blooms into opacity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year! Have some feels.

When she wakes up, Peggy casts her eyes over the room, assessing. There is a burning desire under her skin to ensure that everything is as it should be.

Bedside cabinet, chair pushed to one side, table opposite her bed, door and window fastened. She raises a hand and rubs at the creased skin above her brow. Her head aches.

At nine-thirty, there’s a tap at the door and it opens to admit a nurse Peggy hasn’t seen before. She raises her eyebrows inquisitively but receives only a placid _good morning_ in response. It unsettles her; it pricks at something in the back of her mind, beyond the limit of her reach. Floating in negative space.

“No Evan today?” she asks, tentative. Her mind is already searching for an explanation.

“It’s Saturday.” The nurse props the door open with her hip and tugs in a laden trolley.

Saturday? _Ah_. Weekend nurses. Evan studies at community college on Saturdays. He’s training to be a plumber. They’d discussed the difference between _tap_ and _faucet_. He’d patiently answered her questions about how modern pressurised water systems were better than the ones she’d grown up with, and for the rest of that day the jargon swirled around her head like liquid around a pulled bath plug. Exactly like that, as it drained away. She _felt_ it leave her.

Now, Peggy remembers the way Evan’s lips shaped the words. The twisting motion of his hands as he demonstrated how to create an airtight seal around a… around a type of valve.

She hates that she can’t summon the words he taught her. It’s _ungrateful_.

 “Breakfast.” This new nurse slides a tray out from beside the bedstead, slanting her wrist so that the little wooden slats jut out from the underside, and places it flat over Peggy’s legs. She’s brisk but careful, but when she returns Peggy’s weak smile, it suggests that her quiet is characteristic rather than sullen.

“Thank you,” Peggy says, watching as the nurse lays out a plate, knife, a narrow rack of toast. There’s a little teapot too – tin, but it’ll do the job. The cup and saucer that accompany it are fine bone china. Patterns run over them both, mismatched but beautiful, the faded remnants of gold filigree more like winter branches than summer foliage.

“You are welcome.” The reply holds just enough of an accent that awareness drops into Peggy’s mind like a pebble down a well shaft.

“Peggy,” she says, and holds out a hand. “Please call me Peggy.”

The girl takes it: shakes it gingerly, careful not to knock the tray. “I know,” she replies, and Peggy suddenly stiffens.

 _Oh_. She opens her mouth, wanting to apologise, despite having promised herself she never would. That promise has been broken before. No doubt it’ll be broken again before the week is out.

“Zhang Lin,” the nurse says, putting one hand on the trolley to steady it as she bends to retrieve a single-portion jar of marmalade from the basket on the bottom shelf. She straightens and meets Peggy’s eyes. Zhang Lin’s turn downward at the outer corners; they’re dark and warm. “Please, call _me_ Lin,” she smiles as she echoes Peggy’s words own back to her.

“It’s a beautiful name,” Peggy says, turning her attention towards the teapot. She picks up a teaspoon and stirs, presses the teabag against the inside, then removes it and flips the lid closed. Making her own tea is something she clings to: a pocket of normality.

(Of capability.)

It’s nice to have something normal. Peggy pours herself a cup and adds a dash of milk. The tea blooms into opacity.

Lin throws open the curtains; the light in the room goes from muted to bright in an instant. Then: “Oh.”

Peggy looks up from her tea, spoon tinkling against the china. “Everything all right?”

When Lin turns there’s something metallic in her hand. “The window-latch is broken,” she says, not sounding too concerned.

“I don’t…” Peggy frowns. It’s autumnal outside; she wouldn’t have had the window open since summer.

“Not a problem,” Lin breezes, setting the latch down on the trolley with a sharp _snap_. “They can get brittle with age – they break easily. I will let a manager know and they’ll have it fixed for you.”

“Thank you,” Peggy replies as Lin rounds the end of the bed, steering the trolley with a deft wrist. “Oh, could I–?”

Lin pauses. “Yes?”

But she can’t bring herself to ask for the broken latch. If it were Evan standing here smiling at her, she might be surer – but to ask is to open oneself to another, and she’s never been adept at that.

“Could I trouble you for today’s newspaper?” she asks instead.

Lin’s smile turns fond. “Of course you can. I’ll get it to you sometime this morning.”

She promises a shower too, and Peggy nods. With a little help, she can reach the specialised bathroom just across the corridor from her room. Personal hygiene, thank God, is something she is still capable of maintaining. Her body isn’t the finely-honed tool it once was, but its failure is the natural consequence of her years. What goes on in her mind is… is an entirely different phenomenon. It’s the ground falling softly away.

Once Lin has left, Peggy opens the top drawer of her bedside cabinet and rummages. Snatching up the first scrap of paper she finds, she turns it to its blank face and writes: _Lin. Saturday nurse_.

She bites her lip and stares at the paper, dubious that the information will stick. It takes a large hook nowadays, to catch on her long-term memory.

 _Broken window-latch_ , she writes. That’s nothing to do with Lin, really. Having it here in pencil is a poor substitute for the real thing, cold and solid in her hands, but it might be useful.

* * *

That afternoon, there’s another visitor. Dark haired, with shadowed eyes that belie his electric manner. Peggy looks at him without speaking for a few careful moments.

 _Howard_ , her brain supplies automatically.

“Tony,” she smiles. She holds out a hand and he comes to her side like a paperclip to a magnet. “You look tired.”

His mouth twists upwards at one side. “ _I_ look tired? Rich coming from you, Agent. Where’s the shooting lesson I was promised, huh?”

An inside joke of theirs, from the days when a Tony barely up to her knees would pout until she showed him the pistol in her purse. She only ever let him see it, never hold it. With Howard as a father, she knew his life would be awash with lethal weapons soon enough. Instead, she bought him a slingshot for his tenth birthday, promising to give him a real lesson once he could fire off pebbles in a straight line to rattle-smack empty 7-Up cans.

“Perhaps later,” Peggy says, tilting her face as Tony leans in to kiss her cheek. He’s impeccably dressed, suit and tie an ostensible token of his status, although she knows better. The memory of numerous conversations with Edwin Jarvis, God rest his soul, provide her with ample reminders that little Tony Stark always scrubbed up for Agent Carter’s visits. “With the amount of sleep I suspect you haven’t had, I doubt you’d be up to scratch.”

He stares at her for a beat and then laughs. To anyone else it might sound brittle but Peggy knows him like he’s her own. Tony shrugs out of his jacket and flicks his wrists out in front of him, cufflinks glinting. “Right,” he begins, fingers splayed in mid-air as though he’s already typing. His enthusiasm reminds Peggy of Howard, forty years ago, dandling a chubby baby on his knee and beaming with the novelty. Long before the baby became a toddler became an infant became a teenager became a troubled young man, endlessly replaced by the latest upgrades in the racing, frenzied world of technology.

How was a child ever expected to keep pace?

_Aeronautics, Peg! The biggest jet engines you can imagine! We’re gonna send men into orbit!_

_Look at him, Howard. Take your eyes off the moon and look at your son while he still watches you with stars in his eyes_.

But Peggy never said a word. The precarious friendship they shared was founded on the acknowledgement that they were both too stubborn for their own good. Not the most wholesome of foundations, but they respected it for the most part. Peggy never openly confronted Howard about the way he raised his son.

She does, perhaps, regret that.

“Okay, okay,” Tony’s saying, and Peggy blinks, tethering herself to the present with the threading of her fingers together. Tony gesticulates when he talks and she loves it for more than just the way it helps her focus. “Cap said you wanted tech and believe me you could not have asked at a better time.” He’s got a slim black oblong – a StarkPad – set up on his knees, held at a viewable angle in a rigid black case, and his fingers are flying across the attached keyboard. “This is – well, think of it as a temporary measure. Cap says jump, I say how high.”

He winks and Peggy seizes the break in the flow of speech to thank him. He waves her off, as she knew he would.

“Eh, this is nothing. I can get you an arthritis-friendly keyboard by next week. I’ve upped the sensitivity on this, fiddled with the speech-to-text software, calibrated it to your voice patterns. Should be okay til I can get you some real solutions. But _this_ ,” he says, propping the tablet on her lap and turning it so she can see the screen, “is our latest thing. Technically it’s not available to the public for a coupla months.” He flips through the apps, eyes on the screen. “So don’t go giving it to those bastards at Apple.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Tony’s grin is infectious, brimming with excitement. Two children sharing a secret. “Pinkie swear,” he demands, suddenly serious, and as she laughs and holds up her hand, Peggy wonders who’s humouring who.

They go through the rest of the tablet’s specifications together. Peggy knows he’s toning down the techspeak for her but she almost wishes he wouldn’t. He does, however, let her take the helm and navigate around the device herself once he’s explained things. StarkPads are new to her, but the interface is intuitive and software structures are embedded in her head, logical and precise.

“Not bad,” Tony says, leaning back in the chair and rolling his shoulders. “Picked it up faster than Steve, anyways. The guy’s smart, but his skull’s thicker than a–”

“Steve?” Peggy whispers, and Tony is silenced mid-word. Peggy blinks at him, this tanned and suited man with his styled hair combed back from his temples, and it’s _wrong_. Tony never met – but this isn’t – this can’t be–

She shakes her head but the fog doesn’t clear. “I don’t–” she says, then, “Howard used to–” and someone is taking her hand, but she snatches it away, because something’s afoot here and Tony wouldn’t bring up Steve like that. Not so flippantly: he knows it aches, even now.

“Howard,” she says, desperate. “I loved him too, Howard, I promise you I did–”

“Peggy, it’s Tony – come on, you know me, I’m unforgettable–”

“–but we can’t bring him back by wishing it.”

“Don’t do this to me now, Peggy. Agent. Agent Carter, you with me?”

Peggy draws herself up, away from him; he’s staring at her with imploring eyes. “You’re not Howard,” she says coldly. Something is roaring in her ears. Breathing is difficult.

He rises from the chair and grabs for the emergency assistance pull-cord. Peggy snaps, “Don’t touch that!” but her own hands are shaking along with her voice, and she misses when she tries to swat him away. The tablet slides silently off her lap and lands screen-down on the floor, a muffled _thump_ on the carpet.

“Sorry Pegs, I had to,” the man who isn’t Howard says. She doesn’t trust the pain he evokes.

“You’re not Howard,” she repeats, fainter, as he scoops up the tablet and brushes a thumb over its blank face. “I know you’re not him; what do you _want?”_ Demanding it lends it strength.

“Hasn’t cracked,” he says, though his voice sounds dangerously close to doing so. “Wouldn’t matter if it had, I can get you another one. It’s a tablet computer, the latest model. StarkPad. Operating system version six-point-one – it’s just the beta for now but I’ve got rid of the more heinous glitches. I’m just gonna keep talking ’cause you told me it helps – told me that a couple months after you moved in here. Like you said not to loom over you, and I’m kind of doing that, so I’m just gonna…” He sits, flips the tablet’s case shut and cradles it in the crook of one arm.

Peggy’s pulse is still beating accelerated time in her throat. If this man with Howard’s mannerisms isn’t here to threaten her, why is he here? Why is he familiar? She blinks; she knows this man’s face.

“I don’t have a son,” she says without meaning to.

He stops talking and looks at her curiously. The hurt is still there, and it hurts _her_ , too – her chest aches with it. She puts one hand over her heart and cannot speak.

“No,” he says. Careful, cautious, as though she’s a wounded animal. “No, you don’t.”

The silence stretches thin.

A nurse hurries into the room. It’s not Lin: it’s a middle-aged lady whose stoutness Peggy recognises.

“How are things?” she says evenly, addressing them both although her eyes are on Peggy.

Meggie. Her name is Meggie. They’d laughed about their rhyming names when they’d first met. She’s the palliative care specialist here. More importantly, Peggy trusts her, and Meggie doesn’t seem at all fazed by this man’s presence.

Peggy takes a breath. Being mistaken is a familiar taste to her now, but it’s no less sour for that.

“Things are… calmer,” says the man beside her, and she turns to face him.

It’s Tony. How could she – it’s Howard’s _son_ , how could she have–?

“Tony.” Groping blindly for his hand, she finds it and grips. “Tony. My God, I – I’m sorry, my dear, I shouldn’t have–” Apologies make him uncomfortable; they always did. Peggy swallows and composes herself. “It’s all right,” she says to Meggie, who has moved to stand at the end of the bed. “I won’t forget again.”

Meggie smiles at her, but Peggy anticipates the pity and turns away before she says something rash. She looks instead at Tony’s face. Drinks it in; catalogues the myriad ways it differs from his father’s.

“It’s so good to see you, Tony,” she says. “We’ll have to see about that shooting lesson one of these days.”

“Sure thing, Agent,” he replies, breaking out a smile. Peggy dislikes it: it speaks of cynicism and _ennui_. Tony’s mouth has a heavy seriousness about it at times that Howard’s never did, and it worries her. It’s – it’s caustic. Too sharp for a face she’s known since its infancy.

“If you can drag yourself away from your laboratory for long enough,” she teases gently, and something tight around her heart releases when Tony’s face softens.

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, so I brought you this.” He holds up the black oblong on his lap and waits for a beat. Peggy smiles interestedly; Tony holds her gaze. “It’s our latest tablet,” he explains. “Lemme show you what’s new.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd, as ever, by [Scap](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui).  
> I can be found drawing Avengers and shouting into the void on [Tumblr](http://www.stripyjamjar.tumblr.com).


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Easy as pie. Today was going to be a positive day. She’d been sure of it.

Tony puts the chair back behind the cabinet before he goes. It’s strange: Steve always leaves it out by her bed, as though he’s trying to remind her that it’ll soon be occupied again. That he really was there. That she’s not alone.

Tony puts it back because it’s hideous.

It’s helpful, though, that her two most frequent visitors leave such a characteristic trail for her to follow. It means that when Peggy wakes up the next morning and sees grey-and-pink fabric, she freezes.

That means something. Quick, scrabble for it before it slips out of your–

There’s a sharp rap on her door and it opens to admit Meggie. Sunday is medication day. It’s one of the things Peggy has to avoid thinking about too hard for fear of snapping at the nurses. They’re so kind here. So kind, while she boils and thrashes and rages. Some of the meds help with the frustration, others with the pain. They can’t do much else.

Meggie’s pills are clattering gently as she tips them into the individual compartments. MTWTFSS labelled on a long, thin, greenish plastic contraption. The days of the week, in case Peggy forgets whether she’s taken them between one shift of carers and the next. The pills are kept in the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet, anyhow. Locked away like she’s a child again.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. In. Out.

“What’s the word,” she says, looking up at the whitewashed ceiling, “for when – when the medicine doesn’t. When it’s a painkiller. There’s a term for it.”

“Analgesic?” Meggie suggests. She screws the lid back on to a pill pot until it _clicks_.

Peggy flinches. The sound was too close to her face. “No,” she says. “When it’s not–”

She cuts off again. The words aren’t–

They’re not–

Blank pages. She feels like sobbing.

But she’d _remembered_ – she remembered Steve, just now. Easy as pie. Today was going to be a positive day. She’d been sure of it.

“Palliative,” says Meggie triumphantly.

Peggy nods. The word drops like a plumbline. Dull and leaden, as she remembers the previous afternoon. Meggie the palliative care specialist, dispelling Peggy’s terror with the pragmatic normalcy she brought into the room with her.

There had been so much _hurt_ in Tony’s eyes.

“Hey now,” Meggie is saying, pressing a tissue gently into Peggy’s hand. “Here, love. Here.”

Peggy scrubs at her eyes, and Meggie chides, “Gently.” She touches Peggy’s wrist and Peggy jerks away sharply.

“All right!” Meggie reassures her, straightening. The words aren’t reproachful – she’s too much of a professional for that – but they express enough that Peggy wants to sit her down on the bed and explain about how sometimes being touched makes her want to scream and bite and gouge. How sometimes her skin is needles and sometimes it’s lice.

But she knows the words won’t come even before she opens her mouth, so she doesn’t. Perhaps Meggie already knows. This is her job, after all. She ought to understand.

Pricking, prickling, crawling, wriggling, writhing, feeling as though she’s about to _burst_ –

“Here we are.” Meggie offers up some water and a handful of tablets. The fluid shimmies in the glass as she passes it over, the tiniest of ripples disturbing its surface. Peggy glares at her hand. Willing it to be still is as ineffective as ever.

She takes the pills without complaint. The water is cold. Her lips sting. Her _teeth_ ache. Meggie gives her a satisfied nod and gathers up the medical paraphernalia.

“Sorry.” Peggy can’t meet her eyes, but she has to say this. She _is_ sorry: more so than she can articulate.

There’s a rustle and she flinches automatically, but Meggie doesn’t try to touch her again, simply stoops to put the weekly-labelled pot back in the bottom drawer and says, “It’s all right, love.”

The key scrunches its way out of the lock. Tinny with an underlying metallic whine. Peggy closes her eyes. _Please, don’t mind my being aggravating,_ she wants to explain. _It’s only that everything is too loud today_.

* * *

She finds yesterday’s newspaper under her pillow. When she unfolds it, a half-completed crossword blares out at her in monochrome. She takes one look at it and chokes on a wounded sound: not quite a sob, not quite a laugh.

She replaces the paper without a word.

* * *

Sunday also means Evan.

He comes into her room in good humour. He’s effervescent today: his eyes are shining and his fingers whip through the air as he talks. It’s as though he’s trying to spin the words off his tongue faster than they naturally fall.

Peggy hasn’t spoken a word since apologising to Meggie this morning. Evan casts a glance over her when she nods and smiles in response to his greeting. Shunting his trolley to one side of the door, he’s a little slower than usual so that the jolting movement doesn’t rattle too loudly. He carries on talking, however, keeping his tone even and steady, at odds with the expressive gestures he makes. He waxes lyrical about a girl named Caitlin.

“She’s the one I–” he says, and then breaks off, suddenly awkward. “We went to see the meteor shower together?”

Peggy’s not sure why he intonates it as though he’s uncertain. She cocks her head and meets his eyes. He gives her an unreadable smile and tells her the story, while Peggy lets her eyes drift closed and listens to his words and the sounds of him pottering around the room. There’s a rustle over by the window as he tucks the curtains neatly behind their holdbacks. Meggie had opened them but she never takes the time to drape the fabric like Evan does. He knows Peggy so well that sometimes it’s a trifle disconcerting.

Evan swipes the windowsill with a duster.

“Oh,” he says suddenly, poking at the frame. He frowns. “That’s not, like, secure. At _all_.” The window swings open as he pushes. At five inches wide, it crunches to a halt, glass pane juddering, and Evan says, “Oh,” again. There’s a steel wire connecting the solid frame to the moving section. It’s heavy-duty and bound in red rubber. “Is that new?” he asks.

Peggy just raises an eyebrow at him. It’s the most distinctive expression she’s mustered since he’s been here, and he cracks a grin.

“Okay, okay. I feel ya. I’ll ask someone. The handle’s broken off – that’s what the actual problem is. Pretty sure they can fix it up for you though.”

Evan hooks one finger under the frame and tugs the window closed. He crosses the room and pauses with one hand brushing the architrave around the door. “I’ll come say goodbye before my shift’s over,” he promises, and then he’s gone.

Peggy looks back at the window. The looped wire is stark against the plastic. Red on white like a ‘No Entry’ sign.

* * *

Perhaps Evan did come back. The next morning, Peggy wakes up to the smell of flowers. Over on the table, there’s a new bunch of them arrayed in her vase, pink and white petals spilling over the lip, exuberant in their vivacity.

She can only spare them a glance, however, because what’s below them arrests her attention. There is a blue ribbon tied in an uneven bow around the vase, drawn in around the slender point at which the glass bottlenecks before flaring at the top. The ribbon is a soft, clear azure, and it makes Peggy remember the importance of her blue flowers. A memory trick she’d forgotten. Oh blessed irony.

Blue ribbon for blue eyes. Smiling eyes. Steve’s eyes. _Steve’s alive_ , she thinks with a smile. Silk ribbon, unlike petals, won’t wither. Evan is wonderful for thinking of it. She imagines him kneeling there on the carpet, squinting as he does his best to tease out the bow into a more aesthetically pleasing shape. She must remember to thank him.

Turning onto her side, Peggy reaches into the top drawer of her cabinet for a notebook. Her fingers scrabble amidst the mess of stationery and wrappers and the like, but they bring up only individual papers. The first one she grasps has _broken window-latch_ written at the bottom in spidery handwriting that bears only a passing resemblance to her own. _Oh_ , she thinks. She must have known about the latch before Evan noticed it. Dimly, she hopes it won’t cause trouble for him if it’s reported twice: she knows all too well what a minefield administration can be to navigate.

Carefully, Peggy takes up a pencil and writes _thank Evan_ before she has to pause and unclench her arthritic fingers. They crack softly as she stretches them out, familiar pains zipping out from her knuckles. She can’t focus on them, however – has to repeat _ribbon ribbon ribbon_ in her head, or else this instruction will be empty and purposeless.

_for_ , she writes, wincing. Clenching her jaw.

_ribbon_.

There. It’s there in graphite, hard and definite. She resolves not to forget it.

* * *

Mondays are busier. The lethargy of the weekend dissipates and the care home comes alive with people. Usually, Peggy sits up in bed with her door open and eavesdrops on the snatches of conversation that drift through. The cleaners do the rounds at noon and she can hear the whine of the vacuum cleaner. She’s tetchy today though, and doesn’t realise why until Evan closes the door to block out the sound. Quiet envelops them both like water.

“Is that better?” Evan says, and Peggy breathes, “Yes.”

_So young and so kind_.

“I have a half-hour break,” he says. “Mind if I hide out in here?”

She manages to shake her head and looks around for the chair. Evan drags it out from behind the cabinet and sits, tugging a package from his pocket. Sandwiches of some kind. He takes a large bite and sighs happily. “’M starving.”

Between mouthfuls, he tells Peggy about his day yesterday. The words blow past her cognitive centres like a fresh breeze. Evan never gets shrill when he’s excited: he just speeds up, to the point where his half-eaten lunch is lying abandoned in his lap and he’s using both hands to mime something new he’s learnt. Peggy can’t feel guilty for failing to follow the sense of it. She’s too caught up in the brightness of Evan’s eyes, the angle of his smile. He’s happy, and that alone warms her from the inside out.

One of the cleaners pokes her head around the door, vacuum nozzle in hand. Peggy gazes at it in dismay, but Evan is already speaking.

“Not today, thanks,” he says amicably, and the nozzle retreats. Evan settles back into the ugly chair – as though asking for peace is easy – and shoves the rest of his sandwich into his mouth. As he brushes crumbs off his knees, he suddenly looks abashed. He swallows and laughs. “Guess I should’ve thought that through.” But he crosses the room to fetch a dustpan and brush, and he leaves the room clearer than he found it.

_Oh, my dear. You shouldn’t be spending your break in here with the dust, shielding me from the noise of the world_. But she’s staggeringly grateful all the same.

“Okay,” Evan says, stowing the dustpan away. “I’ve gotta go and–”

“Thank you,” Peggy blurts, so sharply that it sounds for a moment like she’s furious. Evan raises his head and meets her eyes. But there’s a crumpled paper in her hand and she has rediscovered something important buried under the shifting sands of her memory. “For staying,” she concedes, “but also for the…”

Blue. Silk. Vase. Bow. The right word doesn’t spring to her tongue. But the paper crinkles and she glances at it. “Ribbon,” she smiles. “Ribbon. The blue one.”

“The what?” Evan turns on his heel to see where Peggy is pointing. “Oh, that wasn’t me, I just refilled your flowers.”

“But I.” Peggy frowns. It’s the perfect shade of blue, the ribbon, and she can’t let the fact go.

Thirty years ago – _one_ year ago, even – she wouldn’t have let that lie. Would have stood her ground and said her piece and sworn to find the truth, no matter how trivial. But now? Well. Who’s to say Tony hadn’t brought the damn thing? Or Steve himself? And she doesn’t want Evan to witness her humiliation if it turns out that she’s mistaken.

So she simply says, “Oh.” Passes the back of her hand over her forehead and musters a mild smile. “I must have forgotten.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queller of typos: [Scappodaqui](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui).


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Howard?” Peggy calls. It’s met with silence from the other side of the door, so she says it again, surer. Perhaps he hasn’t heard. “Howard Stark, I want to see you.”

Later in the day, there are voices from outside her room, muffled but audible through the door:

“–knows me, she always knows me, come _on_ –”

“I’m sorry, sir, but–”

And there’s something urgent, muttered in bad humour, which Peggy can’t make out.

“I can promise you we’re all too well aware of _that_.” Meggie sounds like she’s reached the end of her tether. “Go on in, if you must. I can’t stop you. But you’ll do more harm than good. Today’s been a bad one.”

The urgency has flattened out somewhat, but the other voice is still too low for Peggy to decipher. Its tone flicks up towards the end: evidently a query.

“No, of course not. She hasn’t had the _time_ , let alone the–” A pause. “I will _let you know_ , Mr Stark.”

Stark?

 _Howard_.

“Howard?” Peggy calls.

It’s met with silence from the other side of the door, so she says it again, surer. Perhaps he hasn’t heard. “Howard Stark, I want to see you.”

The evenings are beginning to draw in, and the autumnal evening light streaks her room with alternating grey and orange. In the poor visibility it produces, Peggy casts her eyes over her belongings. There’s a flat surface, a vase: her old work desk. She can almost smell the leather: green like grass, studded with brass rivets. Running her fingernails over them would make a satisfying thudding sound, like a woodpecker. She does that while she’s sitting at the desk and musing over a particularly thorny problem with her division.

There’s a slight rustle from outside her door, and then a man’s voice says, “Sorry ma’am. He just stepped out.”

Peggy sighs, rolling her eyes. “Well,” she instructs, “when he returns, tell him to get his troublesome behind in here. I need to speak with him.”

Another pause before the same voice replies, “Will do, Director.” It’s softer this time: Peggy strains to hear it. She opens her mouth to tell the agent to speak up, but it’s cut off by a yawn. She thanks her lucky stars that she’s not in company before falling back against her pillows and letting her eyelids droop.

She sleeps soundly.

* * *

On the wall against which her bed butts up, there is a calendar hanging from a pin board. The pins are coloured, primary hues with rounded plastic heads. Peggy has a system: colour-coded papers skewer the cork. Red and yellow and blue imbued with meaning. She wrote them down somewhere.

The calendar is mostly blank nowadays, aside from the days steadily crossed off by the nursing staff. Peggy asked them to do it, so that the calendar keeps track of passing time even when her head can’t quite keep up. Little crosses in blue and black ink from the biros that are carried around with them in apron and pocket. A tally scratched on a wall.

Sometimes, she forgets that the calendar is there altogether if she doesn’t happen to crane her neck at the right angle to catch a glimpse of it. She certainly doesn’t write on it herself. Not anymore. She flew off the handle once, because she read _2pm – Steve visit_ scrawled in one square. Thought it was someone’s idea of a cruel, cruel joke.

It _was_ a cruel joke, in a way.

 _Stop it, Peg_. She shakes herself, roughly.

It’s a Tuesday. Evan comes in early on Tuesdays. At the beginning of the month, they write a large capital ‘E’ followed by ‘a.m.’ or ‘p.m.’ to delineate his usual shifts. Not the most sophisticated of ciphers, but it suffices – when she remembers to check it.

For now, she can’t waste time on melancholia. Evan will be here soon.

Peggy pushes herself upright and arranges the pillows behind her. It’s one-handed and awkward, because her left shoulder doesn’t have as much rotation as it used to, but she manages to yank one into a supportive position at the base of her spine. Even that minute exertion leaves her short of breath, and she grimaces.

Rummaging in the top drawer of her cabinet, she brushes aside her notebook and a couple of loose leaves of paper before seizing her hairbrush. Her back clicks as she straightens, but she has things to do. Evan’s coming. The least she can do is make herself presentable.

 _One hundred strokes, girls_ , the form mistresses at St Martin’s used to drill. _Start at the tips and work up – no tugging, now. When you’re finished, you may go outside to play_. Peggy used to brush frantically, eager to be done with the repetition. By the time she reached one hundred, her hair was smooth as satin and her arms ached. Her form mistress would purse her lips in mild disapproval but could find no fault, and little Margaret would stand ramrod-straight with her arms behind her back and a bright, triumphant grin on her face until she was dismissed.

The movement flows as naturally as it ever did. Although Peggy’s arms are slower now, her strokes not as sure. And there can be no skipping down the stairs to burst out into the gardens and inhale the scent of cut grass.

 _Scent_. Peggy latches onto the thought. She always wears scent for visitors, even though Evan smiles and blushes and tells her that she needn’t have bothered. _It’s not all for your benefit_ , she often thinks. Perhaps she has said it aloud once or twice. Snapped it – harsh, instantly regretful.

Sometimes Peggy misses living in a world where people rose to meet her intransigence with their own.

But Evan is forgiving, and she cannot regret that.

There’s a bottle of perfume tucked at the front of the open drawer, out of the way of careless elbows. But it’s the wrong shape, the wrong colour. Peggy eyes it dubiously. She dabs it on regardless: cool on her inner wrists and the dip between her collarbones. It smells pleasant enough, but it’s not _her_. She doesn’t remember where it came from. Her customary scent is–

Is–

Peggy’s hands are shaking, and she replaces the bottle so as not to drop it. The name is on the tip of her tongue. She can _smell_ it, still – delicately musky. Cognac and roses. She wore that perfume for years.

She slams the drawer shut.

The knock at her door makes her jump.

“Yes,” she calls, and then blinks in confusion, expectations not correlating with reality.

“Good morning,” says the man who isn’t Evan. He’s wearing a faded navy overall and carrying a toolbox. It flakes terracotta rust as he sets it down on the windowsill. “Here to fix the window. Don’t mind me, I’ll only be a jiffy.”

Listening to him, Peggy feels her lips curl upwards. His accent isn’t as proper as hers once was, but it’s unmistakably English. South-east, she suspects: the Fens. He unpacks more tools than she would think he needs, clanking gently against each other. There’s a rustle as he unwraps the new latch from its polythene packaging. “Wasteful,” he sniffs, shaking his head at the plastic.

Peggy dozes despite herself, lulled by the shunt and whirr of workmanship. The maintenance man hums tunelessly, _sotto voce_.

The drone of a drill jolts her back to her senses.

“’Pologies,” says the man, without turning around. There’s now a stubby bit of pencil wedged behind his ear.

“Can’t be helped,” Peggy begins to say, but she’s interrupted as the drill whines again. The man wiggles his wrist a few times, and tiny corkscrews of white plastic fall away from the window frame. They remind her of–

She blinks, her mind roaring like the tool’s motor.

They remind her of–

Is it overheating? It’s old, well-used. Smells like frazzled dust and hot grease. The noise shuts off briefly as the man pauses to change the drill bit. The new one has a Philips screwdriver head on it: Peggy recognises it. A vague memory surfaces of breaking into a locked desk drawer. The screws at the back had little crosses sunk into them. Awkward to reach and gleaming silver at her: mocking. She can’t remember the mission objective, but she can remember _that_.

The man grunts and the drill in his fist stutters as the chuck clamps. He squeezes the trigger once more before drawing back. Surveying the window, he opens and shuts it a couple of times before declaring, “All set.” He starts to dismantle the drill, slotting components back into the toolbox.

Peggy smiles. _So efficient_ , she wants to say. _Thank you_. But her gaze snags on a single curl of white plastic caught in the fine hairs on the back of the man’s hand, and she says “Snowflakes,” instead.

He gives her a blank look. Then he follows her line of sight and brushes off his hands onto his thighs. “Right you are,” he says uncertainly. He clears his throat and picks up the toolbox, leaving four L-shaped rust kisses where the corners rested against the sill. “I’ll be off then.” And with a nod, he’s gone.

Peggy folds her hands in her lap and looks over at the pristine new latch. The low-hanging sun glints off the key; he’s left it in the lock for her. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth until her jaw spasms and she inhales sharply.

When Evan comes in, it’s a pleasant surprise.

“Ooh, that’s new.” He bounds over to the window and runs a finger over the new latch, then steps back and regards the surrounding mess with baleful eyes.

Peggy smirks at him; he pulls a face and sighs dramatically.

“I’ll go get the vacuum.”

“Thank you kindly,” she says, prim, and his laughter fills the room. He’s back before she can forget he was ever there, brandishing the handheld vacuum as though it’s a rapier.

“ _En garde_ ,” he pantomimes, flicking the switch with his thumb. The ensuing hum of suction is so very out of place that Peggy laughs. It’s inaudible above the noise, but that’s fine. A laugh like a secret. Like something to cup between both hands, warm and enclosed.

* * *

Later that day, she decides that her fingers aren’t sore enough to prevent her practising her shorthand; she’s been neglecting it of late. She reaches into her top drawer and pulls out the notebook, flips through until she finds the last leaf on which she wrote. No more than a page and a half of cramped phonetic symbols before she’d been forced to stop. She resolves to do more this time.

Three painstaking lines later, Evan knocks at her door. Peggy lowers her pencil.

“Sorry,” he says, glancing at her notebook. “I brought a damp cloth – for those orange marks.” He gestures towards the window; Peggy remembers the rusty toolbox.

“Of course,” she replies. “Thank you.”

Evan kneels by the window and starts scrubbing at the sill. After a few moments, he begins darting glances at her. She thinks perhaps he’s wondering what she’s doing.

“It’s shorthand,” she explains, tilting the pad towards him. “It hasn’t been useful for a while, not since the advent of…”

Evan waits a beat before turning back towards the window. He says, offhand, “Keyboards and stuff.”

Peggy smiles: she’s onto his trick. “And stuff,” she agrees. He is gentle with her feelings, and she can still be grateful for that.

Grunting in exasperation, Evan stands up. “’S no good.” He folds his arms and glares at the sill. “Must’ve been a pretty heavy box to carry around. There’s dents in the paint. It’s stained – it’s gonna need a repaint, or those marks are gonna stay.”

“Oh, leave it,” Peggy says airily. Every mark and nick and notch in this room can be absorbed into her strategies of remembrance. “It’s… characterful.”

Evan grins. “Can I ask you something?”

“Fire away.”

“Why d’you write in pencil? It’s not so’s you can erase stuff, because I have _heard_ the way you scribble over mistakes.”

It’s his way of letting her know that he sees this is one of her brighter days. A gentle tease. She has an answer for him, too.

“Because,” she says, twiddling the pencil around in her fingers and sliding it behind her ear, “when you write a voiced sound, you press hard to show it’s – heavier. I don’t want to spill ink on the bed, so my fountain pen is out of the question. And–” _I can’t press firmly enough with a biro_ “–it’s not at all clear with a biro. So, pencil.”

It’s the longest speech she’s made in months.

Evan beams at her: he knows. Then he runs a hand through his hand and says, “What’s voiced?”

“ _Vuh_ ,” Peggy replies, enjoying his bemused expression. “ _Duh_. _Buh_. _Guh_.” She pauses, allows him some time to think it through. “Sounds that aren’t _un_ voiced,” she prompts.

Evan’s face lights up with comprehension. “I get it! So unvoiced are like, uh – _tuh_ , like in table?” He breathes the sound, doesn’t engage his voice box.

Peggy nods, thrilled at his perspicacity in the face of her stunted explanation.

“Huh, maybe I’ll do a linguistics class after I’m done with history,” Evan says, sounding thoughtful.

She looks up. “I – I thought you were…”

 _Tap_ and _faucet_. Running water. Curved hands twisting in midair.

“No, no,” Evan corrects swiftly. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m on a plumbing course. I just take a history class too. It’s not like a lot of extra work or anything.”

She’s flustered him. She wants to apologise, but all she can do is shake her head.

“Have,” she manages, “have you – told me that before?” She makes sure to look him in the eye as she asks.

Seconds pass. “Not sure,” Evan lies.

Peggy allows it.

* * *

She tries, for a while, to go back to her shorthand. But her heart isn’t in it and she finds herself staring out of the window instead. There is a line of sunlight that crosses her carpet and creeps up to her shoulder; she tugs at her neckline so as to feel its yellow warmth on her skin.

She’s still holding the notepad, idly thumbing the corner until it dulls into a fibrous nub. No longer sharp enough to give even the thinnest papercut.

The bitter smile that thought produces, however, is piercing.

Peggy relaxes her face, angling her torso towards the thin streak of sunshine. Chasing brightness. She looks down at the pad and turns a page.

Blank.

Something compels her to turn another.

Blank.

Sighing softly, she closes her eyes and continues to leaf through. Dry _fwip_ followed by another. Parchment fingers and rustling pages.

She couldn’t say what makes her look down. She couldn’t say, but she doesn’t care, because there is a substitute ink blot staring her in the face and all at once she grips the notepad tight tight tight as though it’s liable to slip away again.

It was lost. She remembers: it was lost.

How is it _here_?

Her mind clamours, but she reads the words beside the blot and there is silence.

 **JBB IS ALIVE**.

Peggy glances at the ribbon on her vase. For the first time, she notices that it’s a little discoloured around the edges, as though it’s been brushed by grubby fingers. But the colour – oh, the colour reminds her. Blue eyes.

 _Steve,_ she thinks, the whirl narrowing down to a single point of action. She has to tell Steve.

Twisting, she yanks on the emergency cord. It’s the first time she’s touched it herself. While she waits, she clutches the notepad, open to that page, the sheaf of it flipped around the spiral binding so that this has become the cover, the only thing she sees. It’s a trail of gunpowder sparked in her mind: bright and hissing and imperative.

She loves it, but by God, it makes her heart pound.

Evan bursts through the door. “Peggy, what’s up? Are you–?”

“Steve,” she gasps. “I need to telephone Steve.”

He gapes. “Uh–” His eyes flicker over her: she’s breathing hard and there’s a flush of warmth in her cheeks as eagerness morphs into frustration.

“ _Now_ , Evan.” _While I’m still_ –

“Okay,” he says, and bolts.

Peggy closes her eyes. _Steve_ , she thinks – perhaps she whispers it. _James Barnes. Alive, the both of them. After all this time. Alive. Alive. A_ –

Evan returns with Meggie hot on his heels. She looks uncertain, but she’s holding a mobile phone. Peggy reaches for it.

“Marga– Peggy,” Meggie corrects herself. “Are you sure you’re up to this, love?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Peggy grits, and Meggie holds up her hands in acquiescence.

“All right, then. If you must.”

Peggy watches, agonised, as Meggie dials. Steve picks up on the second ring. His words come fast and urgent before Meggie interrupts him.

“Captain Rogers. She’s fine. She’s _fine_. She just wants to speak to you. Yes, she’s here. Okay. One moment.” She holds out the phone; Peggy grabs it with both hands, presses it to her ear.

“Steve?”

“Peggy? Peg, are you okay? Is something wrong?”

She looks at Meggie pleadingly. Thankfully, Meggie gets the message and draws back, one hand on Evan’s shoulder. They wait outside in the corridor, the door pulled to behind them. It’s a sliver of privacy, at least.

“Are you still there? Tell me you’re all right, Peg.”

“Steve, he’s alive.”

Silence. Then, very gentle: “What?”

“JBB, Steve – James, Sergeant Barnes, _Bucky_ , he’s alive. I had to tell you. I had to.”

“Peggy, I–”

He doesn’t believe her. Peggy almost sobs his name into the mouthpiece. “It’s true – it’s true, I wouldn’t have written it if it weren’t true, Steve, please…”

“Hey. Hey, don’t – I believe you. God, Peggy, I believe you, I swear.” His words are fervent but slower now; she can picture the expression on his face. He’s turning things over in his mind. “How d’you know, Peg? Did he – have you talked to him?”

She shakes her head, knowing that she has no proof besides this solitary page in a notepad that was lost and found again. “No,” she sniffs. “Steve, I’m not lying.”

He understands what she’s not saying. _I’m not mistaken_. “I know,” he says, inhaling deeply. He’s pinching the bridge of his nose: she can _see_ it. “I can’t do this over the phone.”

“I had to tell you.”

“Oh, jeez Peg – I didn’t mean – I’m glad you called. _Thank_ you for calling. I just – want to talk to you face to face, okay?”

“Okay,” she repeats, voice small. Hands shaking, she holds on to the phone. Her fingertips slip on the glossy screen and it illuminates, imagining she wants access. Peggy angles it carefully away from her cheek in case she cuts Steve off with an inadvertent brush of skin.

“…as soon as I can,” Steve’s saying, tinny and distant. “I promise. Tomorrow morning – it’s the soonest I can – sorry to make you wait, Peg.”

She recognises that tone. “Steve,” she warns, only half joking. “Don’t get sentimental. God knows, one of us has to be sharp.”

There’s a burst of static – he’s either laughed or huffed in response. “Thanks, Peggy.” He pauses. “Tomorrow, okay?”

“Mhm,” she says, lips pressed together.

The call disconnects. There’s no click, no dial tone, and for an instant Peggy misses them. “’Bye, my darling,” she whispers, staring across the room at the ribbon and willing the memory to stay with her.

Evan pokes his head around the door, and Peggy offers him the phone without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General beta-ment courtesy of [Scap](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui).


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A metallic flash from the window catches her eye and for a second she freezes, adrenaline shooting through her bloodstream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My darlings. Believe me when I say there are myriad and valid reasons for the heinous delay on this chapter. Needless to say, if you're still here, have a virtual squish-hug from me.

That evening is one long itch. Peggy keeps one hand on the open notepad as though it’s a talisman. Like a lucky charm; like the tiny silver horseshoe on the bracelet the St. Martin’s girls had given her when she’d left them to take up her place at Bletchley with the other codebreakers. She’d never set much store by that sort of thing, but she remembers her nervous, fluttering fingers warming the metal.

_Focus, Carter_.

She wrenches her thoughts back to the present: gazes blearily at the page before her.

**JBB IS ALIVE** glares out from the paper. Reading it isn’t enough: she mumbles the words under her breath, listening to them as carefully as she enunciates.

At seven, she hears Meggie’s voice outside, echoing down the corridor – giving some final instruction to one of the nurses on the night shift, perhaps. There are a series of thumping footsteps and then a distant slam. In the summer, when she sleeps with her window open, Peggy can hear the scrunch of gravel as Meggie crosses the car park, and the clunk of her car door as it opens and shuts. Tonight, however, her window is tightly sealed and the sound doesn’t carry.

“Margaret?”

The summons is accompanied by a soft knocking, and a nurse pokes her head around the door.

“Yes?” Peggy demands. Her tone is curt, but the nurse takes it as an invitation to enter.

“Just locking up for the night, ma’am,” she says, singsong and placid. Her dark hair is coiled neatly into a simple knot at the base of her skull and in this light its shine is blueish. She reaches the window in four strides – their surety somewhat at odds with her conservative appearance – and wiggles the latch.

There is a key in the latch; it’s conspicuously shiny. Peggy wonders how it is that she’s not noticed it before. Then she realises that the nurse is still at the window and she blinks, slowly, drawing the flat of her hand over the notepad in her lap.

Granted, she doesn’t know many of the night staff, but Peggy doesn’t recognise this nurse at all. A chill passes over her skin as tangibly as if the window had been thrown wide open. Her knuckles clench white over the lip of the pad.

“All secure,” says the nurse, at last retreating. She pauses by the door and smiles. “Anything else I can do for you, ma’am?”

Peggy does her best to return the smile. “Thank you, no.” _I think I’ll turn in_ , she intends to say, but the words come haltingly to her numb lips as the nurse nods and smiles again, and then she’s gone.

It’s only when little zips of pain catch her attention that Peggy realises she’s still clutching the notepad. Wincing, she uncurls her fingers and straightens them out: slow and tentative. They’re as crooked as the rest of her.

Sighing, she sweeps the familiar bitterness aside. She has a long night ahead.

* * *

Peggy doesn’t sleep.

Like she told Steve on his last visit, she does _know_. The books scattered about her room are testament to a level of insight into her faculties and their deterioration that she refuses to relinquish. Peggy knows that there are pieces of her life that are lost to her. Little fragments that dry out and curl away like peeling paint, brushed away by outsiders’ careless hands. She knows that her most lucid days come with a toll.

But right now, in this instant, she remembers Steve. Steve’s voice on the other end of the phone, too far away from her: the way his concern bled into curiosity and uncertainty. He didn’t believe her, she suspects. Can’t be sure, however – and she hates that, hates not seeing his face and the truths it reveals to her.

_Tomorrow_ , she thinks. He’s coming. He’ll be here.

Peggy glances up at the vase across the room. The flowers are drooping a little, but they haven’t yet begun to wilt. The ribbon around the glass neck gleams pale as death.

Beneath her fingertips, she traces the indentation of the words she wrote. Feels the truth of them in the firm stroke of the pen. She’d been sure of herself, when she wrote this. It doesn’t take a great deal of deduction to establish that fact, but Peggy reaches over for a pencil anyway. If she writes it down, she won’t waste precious time later navigating the same neural pathways, suddenly overgrown and untraversable.

So Peggy writes. Alone and chilled, well into the dead of night, as she has done countless nights in the past – but never, she believes, with this much fervour. She writes the things she knows, over and over until her head is nodding and the pencil slips from her hand as her eyes slide closed – and then she jerks herself upright once again, breathing hard. Shoving one arm behind her, she yanks out her pillows and scatters them onto the floor. To recline against the cold metal bars of the bedstead offers a fair amount of discomfort, as does the waft of cold air against her lower back. She yawns widely and fills her lungs with oxygen, ignoring the creaks within her torso.

A metallic flash from the window catches her eye and for a second she freezes, adrenaline shooting through her bloodstream.

It’s the key. Only the key in the window-latch, glinting at her as she moves her head. She lets out her breath.

The window. _Cold_.

If she’s shivering, she can’t sleep.

Peggy eases herself out of bed. There are thin slippers tucked underneath the bedstead; she leaves them alone. Her walking frame is by the door and she casts it a brief glance before sniffing and turning her attention towards the window. Inch by teetering inch, she makes her way towards it, gripping the back of the ugly chair for support. Darkness be damned: she’s determined.

The window, when she reaches it, unlatches silently. Every moving part has been well oiled. As she goes to fling it wide, however, there is an angry plastic _crack_ and it sticks. Peggy shakes her head as a gasp of exasperation escapes her lips.

“Daft old thing,” she admonishes herself softly. She’d forgotten about the security wire: black, not red in this low light, and easily missed. Her fingers roam over it but she can’t discover how it unhooks. With a sigh, she abandons the attempt and instead pushes the window to its furthest extent, which is no more than a hand span out from the frame. Dissatisfied, she hums to herself, but there is nothing more she can do and her calves are beginning to seize up.

Getting back to the bed takes longer than she would care to consider. She relaxes instantly, fatigue weighing like water in the hollows of her bones, pulling her down towards insensibility. The effort to raise her head is too much, and her thoughts fixate on the unhookable wire. Practical mechanics once came easy to her but this, apparently, does not.

It’s hard to concentrate. The air in her room is chilled and she thinks of mountains. Has she already reached her bed?

Her jaw spasms and she bites down on her tongue, hissing in pain. The bed is straight ahead, she knows. _Forwards, Carter. Keep moving forwards_.

Hey.

Stay awake. Hold on.

She opens her eyes and there’s another flash of metal. The key. The helpful new key to the window that won’t open properly and the concept is so bizarre that she coughs out a laugh.

Somebody is saying her name, she thinks, low and uncertain. A rough voice, restrained.

Is she awake?

_How would you know, Pegs?_

She smiles through chattering teeth and watches herself sink.

* * *

“…gotta be a reason, she wouldn’t just–”

“–only mean to say that–”

“She _wouldn’t_ – she’s ill, not crazy, I _know_ her. She must’ve been trying to–”

“-tain Rogers, please. We have other residents here.”

“Sorry.” A beat. Then, lower: “I’m sorry, it’s just that I spoke to her yesterday about – about something important. Something she needed to tell me, and I have to–”

“Of course I’m not going to stop you from seeing her. But for her sake, take a second to collect yourself first.”

A long, slow sigh like a breeze.

“She’s not… just some frail old lady.”

“I know that. Believe me, I do. Every resident we care for here has led a full and vigorous life. It’s not easy to see a decline like this, especially in someone as bright as her. But it _is_ a decline nonetheless.”

“I know.” It sounds strained; he says it on the inhale. Then he breathes out and repeats, “I know.”

There are a few moments of silence, and then: “I’m sorry. It’s a difficult situation, and it’s completely understandable that you’re having trouble accepting it. Take all the time you need.”

Peggy wonders who the speaker is so intent on seeing. There are more quiet words but she has remembered her calendar, and she cranes around to check it. The last day with a cross through the date is a Monday, so it must be Tuesday today. Evan comes in early on Tuesdays.

Despite the ache in her lower back, Peggy smiles. Perhaps today will be a good day.

There’s a brisk knock at her door, and it opens. Peggy’s hand jerks automatically to pat her hair and there is a twinge of pain. Surprised, she glances down at the cannula taped in place on the back of her hand. A thin line attaches to a tall, wheeled contraption with a sealed bag of clear fluid hanging from it.

“Margaret?”

She’s ignoring her visitor. “My apologies; how rude of me.” With a smile, she adds, “Can I help you?” Then she blinks and realises she knows this woman. “Meggie! You’re in early today. What’s the occasion?”

Meggie has a habit, sometimes, of twisting her wedding ring around her finger: she’s doing it now. On a woman of her stature, the movement is bizarrely juvenile, almost comedic. She regards Peggy for a moment and then says, “Routine, I’m afraid – one of the residents was taken ill during the night.”

_Oh_. Perhaps this is who the speaker in the corridor was so desperate to see.

“I hope they’re all right now?” It’s a loaded question, and one that Peggy is rather afraid to ask. Senior staff being called in overnight doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the news is rarely positive. She sets her teeth ready to hear the worst.

To her relief, however, Meggie nods. “Seems like it. No lasting damage, anyway.” She’s still eyeing Peggy searchingly. “How did you sleep?”

Ah – it’s morning rounds. Meggie must be paying a visit to everyone’s rooms to check in on them. Peggy settles more comfortably into her pillows, though she can’t suppress a slight wince when her spinal vertebrae shift.

“Perfectly well, thank you.”

A pause while Meggie considers this assertion. She moves forward and adjusts the polythene bag on the stand. “Good. Well, if you feel up to it, you have a visitor here to see you.”

“Oh lovely. Please, send them in. I’m quite well enough to receive visitors today.”

Meggie still looks dubious, so Peggy laughs.

“Honestly, dear. You worry too much.”

“That’s my job,” Meggie responds dryly, but she’s smiling. “How are your pain levels – manageable?”

Peggy nods, her eyes on the cannula. “Thanks to this, I presume?” She doesn’t remember when it was put in place, but she doesn’t press that point. She has more important things on her mind.

“Now, now,” says Meggie, folding her arms. “Don’t take that tone. I know you don’t like being hooked up to this, but I want you to promise that if you’re in any discomfort, you let a nurse know and they’ll adjust the dosage. Okay?”

“If I must,” Peggy replies, hoping her smile masks the reproachfulness in her tone. She’d hate for Meggie to think it was directed towards her.

“All right then.” Meggie retreats to the door and pauses. “Ready to see your visitor? He’s come a long way.” She waits for Peggy to nod before she takes a step outside and gestures. “Come on in,” she says, singsong.

The man who enters is tall and impossibly broad, with fair hair brushed away from his face. His smile is rueful, almost apologetic – but there’s something tight to it too, something strained about the set of his lips. He rounds the corner of the bed.

“Ma’am,” he says. He doesn’t quite snap to attention but it’s inherent in his tone. This man exudes military deference. Peggy instinctively looks for a SHIELD badge, but he’s not wearing one: just a civilian jacket over a plain shirt.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Meggie says, disappearing into the corridor. The sound of her footfalls dies away before either of them speaks again.

“How can I help you?” Peggy asks. This has happened once or twice, since her retirement from the SHIELD directorship: the head of a complex operation will send one of their agents to pick her brain on some of its thornier details. More often than not, it’s just a bureaucratic legal tangle – nothing of any particular interest – but Peggy hasn’t had one of these visits for a while. For years, even. She sits up a little straighter and folds her hands in her lap.

The man gestures towards the chair by the bed. “Can I…?”

“Yes – yes of course, please do.”

He sits. Knees together, fingers twisting. He looks at a total loss as to where to begin.

“Are you with SHIELD?”

A vehement shake of his head. “No – I used to be, but not anymore.”

Peggy’s curiosity is piqued, but he doesn’t elaborate. “So if you aren’t here on Nick Fury’s behalf, why are you here?” She notes that his eyes flick to hers when she mentions Fury’s name.

“I’m here because of a friend,” he begins, drawing out the words. He’s tiptoeing between truths; Peggy narrows her eyes. “He’s, uh – he was lost. A long time ago. Years ago. We thought he was dead – _I_ thought he was dead.”

“And he wasn’t?”

Another head shake. “No, he – he was captured and tortured. For _years_.”

Such naked loathing in his tone. She doesn’t wonder who it’s for: she’s all-too familiar with survivor’s guilt.

“And now he’s free and on the run from them. From the people who did this to him, and I haven’t heard from him in – in months. I’ve gotta find him before they do.”

Peggy purses her lips and regards him. “Why come to me with this?”

“Because I trust you.”

_Why?_ The question forms, but she holds it back. The man’s expression is unbearably bleak.

_What are you not seeing here, Carter?_

Carefully, she replies. “If your friend is being hunted by people who kept his survival secret for years, we have to face the possibility that they’ve caught up with him. He may already be–”

“You don’t know that.”

Peggy glances up, startled – his eyes flash wrathful determination and somewhere in the depths of her mind there is movement: a change of pace. It’s as though her brain has suddenly released its clutch and shifted up a gear. She stares open-mouthed at the man in front of her.

“Steve.” Not a question: she’s sure of herself.

“It’s okay.” He sounds wary, as though she’s about to erupt. “You’re right Peg, yeah, it’s me – it’s Steve, but it’s okay, I promise.”

“I’m not dreaming.”

Steve leans forward and takes her hand between both of his own, squeezing gently. “You’re not dreaming.”

Peggy swallows and allows herself three seconds to let this information sink in. Then she says: “Don’t tell me. Alien technology has rendered time travel possible.”

Steve makes a choked sound, and to her delight Peggy recognises it. It’s the surprised laugh he produces when he’s not certain if he ought to be amused or affronted.

“Oh Peg,” he breathes. “I’ve missed you.”

That’s no answer, and he knows it, but in this instant she has bigger fish to fry. “Steve,” she says seriously. “I meant what I said on the telephone. James Barnes is alive.”

“Yes, I just–” He cuts off, clearly confused. “That’s what I meant by–” He stops again.

Is that… is that _guilt?_

Peggy frowns. “You knew.”

He can’t look at her.

“You knew he was alive, and you didn’t tell me? Why wouldn’t you – Steve, he was my friend too!”

He looks up and _oh_ , but that’s truth sitting like silt in the hollows of his eyes.

Peggy goes very still.

Steve can’t act for toffee, and quick though his wits may be, he never could lie to her. It doesn’t take much for her to join the dots. The simple fact of it is that he has told her. He must have. He told her the most important news of his life, and she couldn’t hold on to it.

But she looks at the way Steve’s smile is wavering, and she knows that she can hold herself together for him.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “My mistake.”

They sit wordless, the two of them together in her room. Peggy casts her eyes around, taking in the whitewashed ceiling, the low table, the bland colour of the carpet tiles. That cobweb in the top-right corner that she means to ask Evan to vacuum. The blue ribbon on the neck of the vase.

She glances back towards Steve, whose head is bowed as though at prayer.

“So,” she inquires softly, “how are things?”

He inhales. “I don’t know. I get – we’ve seen flashes, Natasha and I – she’s my friend, she’s smart, you’d like her – on security footage. At least, I think it’s him, it’s hard to tell. He’s so _fast_ , Peg – even when we freeze the picture, I can’t be certain. I don’t know if he’s slowing deliberately to let us see him, or if he’s making mistakes, or if it’s not even him at all and I’m just seeing things.”

“Steve. What about you?”

Drawing himself up, he takes a shuddery breath. “Yeah. I’ve, uh, spoken up for him a couple times. On his behalf, I mean. I don’t know how much good I’ve done – Tony’s got this PR person and she’s incredible, but it means I can’t exactly–” he swallows “–say what I want.”

Peggy knows this, she realises. She’s sat in the communal living room, glued to the television set and trying to tune out the hum of chatter. She’s hushed concerned nurses who’ve done a double-take at her ashen face, and she’s shooed away well-meaning residents when they’ve invited her to join their hand of canasta. She’s stared at the news bulletins and press conferences playing out on the screen, watching as a single man is cast as victim, killer, scapegoat.

She’s been so stupid. So unbelievably, unforgivably stupid. She’s been clinging to nothing but her hollow awareness of Bucky Barnes’ life while Steve Rogers has been tirelessly trying to save it.

Peggy breathes in, slow and deep. There is despair in Steve’s face, no matter how well he thinks he hides it. And she knows how difficult this is for him, how it goes against the grain. She knows that Steve is restraining himself, following the rules, keeping within the lines – all for the sake of someone worth everything to him. “Steve,” she says again, and this time she’s brave: she reaches out and puts her hand on his forearm. “What about _you_?”

He starts and his gaze darts away before lighting on her face, wide-eyed. His expression looks as though it’s been cracked open and Peggy can’t watch him for another moment. “Come here,” she demands, and there’s no hesitation, no moment of shock; Steve simply crumples into her arms.

She won’t tell him it’s all right, that everything will be fine: her conscience won’t allow for that. But she places one hand between his shoulder blades and the other at the back of his neck, gently stroking his hair. For a while, she holds him while the light from the window glints off the cannula taped to the back of her hand.

“You are doing,” she whispers, “every possible thing you can to save him.”

A full-body shudder goes through Steve like an electrical current, and he chokes: “What if it’s not enough?”

Peggy tightens her grip. Part of her wants to rage against her own impotence, but she closes her eyes instead and feels the weight of Steve’s head on her sternum. She sends a swift thanks to the heavens that at least she can do this. She can put her arms around this man and hold him while the world does its level best to break him apart.

* * *

She only closes her eyes for a moment, but when she opens them the room has softened into mid-afternoon shades of orange and she doesn’t recognise the nurse at her window.

“Can I help you?” She concentrates on summoning up a fraction of the iciness that once sprang readily to her lips.

The nurse jumps and spins around. “Margaret! I wasn’t sure you were awake.” She holds up a cloth; there’s a small canister of cleaning spray on the windowsill beside her. “Just trying to get rid of these rust marks.”

Rust marks? Why would there be rust marks?

Streaked rust on the dented white paint: a symbol of her having experienced this room. _Those marks are gonna stay_. Marks from the toolbox.

“Evan said the paint was dented,” Peggy says, warily.

The nurse glances down at the sill. “Yes, he was right.”

“He should have been in this morning.”

“No, not today,” the nurse replies, scooping up the spray can and making for the door.

“But it’s…” Peggy looks over her right shoulder at the calendar. “But he comes in early on Tuesdays.”

“Oh, it’s not Tuesday,” the nurse says, as though that settles the matter. “It’s Wednesday.”

The calendar, with its crossed-out dates, agrees with her, but Peggy stares doubtfully at the glossy paper.

Wasn’t it Tuesday this morning?

“Want me to fetch you anything, Margaret?” says the nurse, pausing on the threshold.

Has she been dreaming?

Peggy shakes her head distractedly, and the nurse nods and leaves. The door shuts behind her with a sharp _snap_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You look like you’ve got a secret,” Evan accuses her teasingly the next day.  
> “Oh my dear,” Peggy replies, “I have more secrets than you have dusters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life, guys. It keeps happening and getting in the way of my ficcing. How very dare it. Thanks for sticking with this! <3

Impotence does not yet sit familiar on her shoulders.

She and Steve always differed in that respect. While they could both see the occasional benefits to inactivity, there were times he’d rush off half-cocked when she would have held herself back, blood boiling, and waited. Times when–

Times when.

Coolness across her palm. Peggy remembers the StarkPad she’d fumbled to lift from the lowest drawer of her bedside cabinet. She locates the power button and the screen blooms into life, sleek and bright.

Tony’s sensitivity calibration is a marvel; it responds beautifully even to her unstable fingertips. Peggy opens a browser window and stares at the blankness. Tony had run through the user interface with her too, but there was really no need. This is technology she’s watched grow and develop since its inception. Throughout her life she strode to keep pace; she knows how to navigate it.

But what use is knowing how to sail when the wind has died?

She requested this tablet. Tony brought it here for her. And she can’t even–

_Patience, Peg_.

She closes the browser and flips through to the notes app.

Outside, the world darkens. Peggy sits illuminated by the screen and carefully types up the things she has learned. When she is done she looks over the few neat lines of text.

_Steve Rogers is alive_

_Hydra within SHIELD_

_JBB is alive_

_Steve searching for Barnes_

There’s a gap then, of a few lines. Then:

_New window-latch_

_Night staff_

That last part is underlined. Treacherous her mind may be, but it’s never been unobservant. Not familiarising herself with the night staff is an oversight she ought to rectify.

She double-checks the tablet’s inbuilt calendar. The nurse had been correct; it _is_ Wednesday today. Peggy shakes her head; she must have been mistaken. She’ll see Evan tomorrow, then. On Thursdays he comes in around lunchtime.

There is no discernible way to account for the twist of unease in her stomach.

In her top drawer, nestled beside a strangely-shaped perfume bottle, there is a television remote. Peggy wonders whether the previous occupant of this room left it behind when they left.

When they left.

She blinks, carefully.

On her low days, it helps to think of those things upon which she maintains a slender yet tenacious grip. Her legs remember how to move. It’s slow, granted, but she can walk herself across the hallway to the bathroom with the aid of a frame. She can reach the window; she’s certain of that.

Sometimes her blood runs cold at the thought of how much worse it could be.

(How much worse it’s going to become.)

There was a lady a few rooms down who was a former biologist. She spent her time rattling off incomprehensible lists of botanical Latin: hollow stems of something that had once been green and vivacious. She was perfectly mobile – could traverse the stairs without a hitch. But she forgot the way to the bathroom one day and wet herself, standing in the corridor shivering and smelling of urine.

If Peggy has ever done that, she doesn’t remember. Thank God.

That lady died about a month ago, quiet and soft as a falling petal. Through their tears, her family agreed it was a blessing.

Something deep within Peggy’s knuckles goes _pop_ and she abruptly releases her vicelike grip on the StarkPad.

“Pull yourself together,” she tells herself, stern and aloud. Her voice doesn’t quaver. “You have a job to do.”

Reopening the browser, she types in _shield stark captain america news_. The page floods with headlines.

**TRISKELION COST PROJECTIONS RISE TO $700 MILLION**

**STARK INDUSTRIES TO SIGN AMNESTY DEAL WITH FOREIGN POWERS?**

**SHIELD ‘WAS CORRUPT TO THE CORE’ SAYS UNNAMED INSIDER**

She touches the last one and reads the first few paragraphs of an article that explains to her, in painstaking detail, how the institution she helped found in order to displace and scatter the remnants of Hydra had instead lived up to its name and provided them with a place to regroup, recruit, regenerate. _I guess we’ll keep cutting them off_ , she’d said once, and even at the time she had known it would be difficult. But she never could have fathomed that she’d be fighting against her _own_.

She feels numb. Betrayal spreads through her veins like a canker, like the open weeping gashes that had appeared one year on the oak trees at the end of the school field at St Martin’s. In two months the trees had transformed from something strong and green and vibrant into little more than husks of frameworks for the lecherous parasite that thrived under bark and branch. The schoolmistresses had told the girls not to touch so Peggy rooted around in the undergrowth until she found a short, stout stick with which to poke at the treacly sap that oozed between cracks in the trunk.

Eventually she’d succumbed to temptation and pressed a finger to the end of the stick to see whether the sap was as sticky as it looked.

It was, and it had been nigh-on impossible to remove the stickiness from her fingers afterwards. They’d smelled funny too: woody and earthy and not quite her own.

Peggy looks at her hands now, pale and ghostlike in the glow from the screen. She thinks of the good SHIELD achieved, and then she looks at the photograph of the Triskelion atop the news article, smoke puthering from the helicarrier taking a graceful dive into the Potomac’s waters. With the trembling of her grip, it’s as though the static image is brought to life: failure in glorious high resolution.

Eventually, the screen dims, then blackens. Peggy sits in the dark for a few moments, fingers hovering uselessly over the vanished keyboard. Wrinkled and feeble. She slams the tablet back into the drawer without turning it off; if she kept it out she’d hurl it like a paperweight and this is Tony’s equipment, Tony’s money spent on it. She won’t harm it.

She never cried for herself, but now she mourns for everyone she has failed. For the way she cannot find what they need; for the way she helped blinker them for so long; for the way she cannot help an old, old friend. She cries alone, softly softly into her hands, the damp papery skin of her palms pressed to her cheeks.

* * *

Eventually, she sniffs and raises her head. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she has barely enough time to register the shame coiling in her gut before everything stills.

_I’m not alone_.

A shadow shifts in the corner, over by the table where she keeps her books.

The ceilings here are plasterboard and coving, and her room has only one door. Her present company picked a time when she would not have noticed the entry.

Another blurred movement as Peggy wipes her eyes. Her fear has relented now, solidifying into something less precarious. If this figure intended to harm her, she would already be dead. Instead, it’s telegraphing its actions, letting her get used to its presence.

 A tickle makes itself apparent in the recesses of Peggy’s mind. She squints into the darkness. On a whim, she says: “Didn’t your mother ever teach you how to knock?”

There’s a rumbled laugh at that, shaky with surprise, and the apologetic words, “Didn’t want to startle you.” Then the shadow steps forward into the dim glow from the moon outside and Bucky Barnes is gazing at her with something like wonder on his face.

“You don’t remember,” he says. “Do you?”

The tickle has become an itch. Peggy shakes her head violently; if she doesn’t move, there’s a real danger she might scream. The bed rocks and Barnes darts forwards.

“Hey,” he says, his voice threadbare, disused. “Don’t.”

His hands are outstretched but he doesn’t touch, and she doesn’t reach.

“You’ve been here before,” she manages, after a long few moments of silence. “I can’t recall the details, I’m afraid. My memory isn’t quite what it was.”

Bucky – James – the Winter Soldier looks down at her. “Neither is mine,” he replies, and there’s just enough of a quirk to the corner of his mouth that Peggy returns it. She laughs until it turns to tears.

There’s a clink as his fingers close around the glass at Peggy’s bedside with measured delicacy. She takes the water gratefully and sips. Once she’s recovered herself, she clears her throat.

“Do we usually talk?” she asks, as conversationally as she can.

“Sometimes.”

“Would you like to talk tonight?”

He lets out a hard breath. “Yes.”

Peggy eyes him; he’s unnatural in his stillness, his body held taut but not rigid. He’s watching her just as intently and their eyes meet: fluid glitter held steady between them. The exhale before the squeeze of a trigger. She waits for him to speak.

Eventually, his eyes flick over to the window. “Why the wire?”

“Security,” Peggy replies automatically, thinking of the workman and his rusty toolbox.

Barnes’s expression doesn’t change but she thinks he doesn’t believe her. “It’s alarmed,” he says. Of course, he’s examined it from the outside.

“You used the window before.”

“Yes.”

**JBB IS ALIVE** in her own damn handwriting. How else would she have known? Perhaps she will find anger at herself later, but for now she’s just tired.

Barnes is wearing civilian clothes, a ratty shirt over a dark jacket. He carefully pulls out a notepad from inside the jacket, holding it out. Peggy spares it a glance: as she suspects, she recognises it. She takes it and flips through, numbly. There is the page with the ink spot and the truth in unsteady capitals and beyond that is more writing: not hers. Barnes’ notes in alternate English and Cyrillic, slanting and angry in a hand almost as crabbed as her own.

“Did I give you this?” Peggy asks.

Barnes meets her eyes. “I took it,” he says. “It wasn’t safe, having it here.”

But she’d written in it only the day before. “But you returned it?”

He nods. “You needed it.”

Ah. Then he’s been watching her, too. He’d seen her distress at its loss. Peggy blinks hard and looks away from him. Her eye catches on the gleaming ribbon on the vase. “Steve has been looking for you,” she says, very gently.

He inclines his head. “I know.”

“Barnes…”

“Please.”

He’s staring at her and she stops. Sighing, she says, “I’ll keep the notebook safe. They won’t know you were here.”

Barnes doesn’t reply.

“You’re welcome to stay for a little while,” Peggy says, gesturing to the chair behind her bedside cabinet. Despite her words, the tug of fatigue is growing and she knows she won’t be able to stay awake for much longer.

Barnes moves a half-step closer, not bothering to bring out the chair. He crouches at her side instead, no less ready for action. His fingers clench on the bedspread, as out of place as any weapon in this quiet residential home.

“Be careful,” Peggy finds herself slurring, sinking backwards into her pillows. She keeps her gaze fixed on Barnes. Tired as she is, the specifics elude her, but she remembers the sense of unease with which the very air seems saturated. “Barnes–” she says, and it’s wrong – she might have called him that once, long ago, when their ranks were more clearly delineated, but not now. Now they draw different parallels between them. He is the same age as her; he is unbearably older. A woman her age could call him _young man_ based on skin alone. But when Peggy looks into his eyes, he is so, so much older than his skin.

_My boy,_ she thinks. _My poor darling boy. What did we do to you?_

“Bucky,” she says at last, opening her eyes.

But she’s been asleep; Bucky left hours ago.

* * *

“You look like you’ve got a secret,” Evan accuses her teasingly the next day.

“Oh my dear,” Peggy replies, “I have more secrets than you have dusters.”

Evan laughs, glancing over at his trolley of cleaning supplies. “Dunno about that. I have a _lot_ of them.” He’s done the hoovering for the day and is tidying the low table. Peggy’s books and the beribboned vase are beside her for once while the varnished surface is sprayed with polish.

Peggy hums. “When you’ve done my job for as many years as I did, come back to me and we’ll compare notes.”

“Okay, okay, I get it, you’re a super-secret spy, whatever.” Evan straightens up and waves a flippant hand. “But I bet James Bond couldn’t change a washer on a faucet. Plumbing’s where the _real_ trade secrets are.”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Peggy says, raising her eyebrows just a fraction; Evan scrunches his nose at her as he wanders over to the window.

There’s something pleasing about watching him work. Most of the other staff are friendly and efficient, but with an underlying brusqueness that constantly reminds Peggy that she is their paying guest. Evan isn’t slow by any means, but he takes a lingering care over his work that suggests he quite _wants_ to be here with her. Their conversations are real, tangible things: they’re alive with exuberance.

Grabbing the chair, Evan hops up and runs his cloth along the top of the curtain rail. “Don’t think I don’t get your sarcasm, just because you’re all British and – huh.”

If she were younger, Peggy would be over by the window in a matter of seconds. “What?” she asks instead, curiosity writhing in her chest.

“There’s a – wait, I think it’s coming off.” Evan lowers his arm and jumps down before opening his fist. Something small and black rests in the palm. “Dunno what it is though.”

But Peggy does. As Evan opens his mouth again, she cuts him off. “Bring it here.” She snatches it out of his hand and without hesitation crushes it with her empty water glass. They both stare at the fragments.

“Peggy, what–”

“They’re listening,” she says, suddenly numb with fear. “Oh God. They’re _listening_.” How long? – and _who?_ – and Evan’s asking her the same question, visibly panicking at her alarm.

“It’s okay – Peggy, it’s alright, it’s fine, I’m here, don’t worry, shh…”

He puts a hand on her shoulder and she clings to his wrist even as he reaches his spare hand behind her to the emergency pull-cord. “Steve–” she starts, but then shakes her head. She needs someone else right now. “Tony,” she says, indistinct. She swallows her tears and repeats herself. “Get Tony for me.”

Evan hesitates. “I don’t know if I can–”

The door opens and a nurse strides in, her dark hair scraped back into a bun. “What’s going on?” Her voice is calm, authoritative.

Peggy opens her mouth to explain but something holds her back. She surveys the nurse instead, lips pursed. Memory stirs and she reaches over for the notepad in her top drawer. On the third page, she has written: _Lin. Saturday nurse_.

This is Lin. This is the nurse who was here yesterday. The nurse who told her, quite correctly, that it was a Wednesday. And who was at Peggy’s window while she dozed.

“…really think it would calm her down. It’s usually a good thing, seeing Mr Stark – isn’t it, Peggy?” Evan glances at her and she nods stiffly, shoving the notepad back into its drawer. He continues, “I know he’s busy, but he’s always come before when she’s asked him to. Can’t we get a hold of him?”

Peggy is expecting a flat refusal, but Lin is clearly better trained than that. She smiles as Peggy tries not to glare at her. “Of course, if you think it’ll help,” she says, addressing Evan. “But it’s likely to be difficult getting in touch with him. He’s out of the country right now; it was on the news this morning.”

**AMNESTY DEAL WITH FOREIGN POWERS?** The headline swims back into Peggy’s mind and she realises why Lin is so calm. Tony’s halfway across the world.

She lets go of Evan’s arm. “I need to talk to him,” she insists, but the repetition sounds feeble and Lin has moved the conversation on.

“Is this what you found?” she asks, pointing at the broken shards of plastic beside them.

“Yeah,” Evan responds. “I think it’s–”

“Never mind what it is,” Lin interrupts. “I’ll deal with it, don’t worry. You can continue your rounds.”

Her tone brooks no argument and Evan collects his duster from the sill. He directs a concerned glance at Peggy but the three of them are silent as he pushes his trolley out of the room, the wheels squeaking softly.

Lin swiftly brushes the remains of the bug into her hand. “I’m terribly sorry about this, Margaret. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

_How about not using me as part of your scheme to recapture James Barnes?_ But Peggy bites back the retort. The last thing she needs is to let Lin know her suspicions. Far better to remain harmlessly decrepit.

So she smiles sweetly. “Nothing, thank you,” she replies, but her eyes follow Lin across the room and with the shutting of the door comes an awful, yawning sense of isolation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot plot plottt.


End file.
